The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 16 No. 2

Authors

Frank Kessler
William M. Bueler
Kim Ezra Shienbaum
Gorman Beauchamp
Mary S. Weinkauf
Roy Campbell
Albert Goldbarth
Michael Heffernan
Dave Smith
Jonathan Katz
Midwest Quarterly Editors

Contents

ARTICLES

Kissinger's "New Dialogue" with Latin American: New Beginnings vs. Old Realities

Population and America's Future

Ideology vs. Rhetoric in American Politics

Utopia and Its Discontents

Five Spokesmen for Dystopia

Gerald B. Winrod vs. the "Educated Devils"

POEMS

Looking Back

Why We Bother

Ripper, from the diary

Treatise: The Dream As Causative Agent

In Sweat

A Medieval Woodcut

A Story About The Air

The Salesman Seeks Shelter

Confession

What Remains, a tale

Walking Into Winter

Strange Poems In Lieu Of A Wife

½ Poem

Limping Poem

Hymn for Focal Points

Concordance To The Poetry of Albert Goldbarth

REVIEWS

Good Manure

Drit Under Glass

Sing Goddamm

Abstract

IN THIS FIRST ISSUE of the New Year we have a selection of articles ranging from Kissinger's Latin American policy to the ever-increasing population problem to the popularity of Utopian and Dystopian literature to government rhetoric versus ideology to a final article on a religious fundamentalist of special interest to Kansas but not without a lesson for presentday West Virginia. We are also presenting a special selection from the work of one of this country's most productive poets.

THE AUTHOR of our article on Kissinger's attitude toward Latin America, FRANK KESSLER, is an assistant professor of political science at Missouri Western State College, St. Joseph, Missouri. With a master's degee from St. Louis University in political science and a doctorate from Notre Dame where he specialized in international relations, more particularly with Latin America, Professor Kessler seems well qualified to bring a fresh and intimate knowledge to his subject. Among his awards, he was on the Ford Honors Program at St. Louis and in Spring 1974 was invited by the U. S. Department of State to participate in its Scholar-Diplomat Seminar on U. S.-Latin American Relations.

WILLIAM M. BUELER is a journalist and free-lance writer whose article on the growing threat of a runaway population would seem to represent a new departure for him. From 1964 to 1969 he acted as Chinese interpreter for the U. S. Government in Taiwan and Japan, then returned to take his master's degree in political science in 1970 at the University of Colorado. The diversity of his interests appears in his numerous publications on topics ranging from Chinese policy to mountain-climbing, among his works being the following books: U. S.-China Policy and the Problem of Taiwan (Colorado Associated University Press); Chinese Sayings (Tuttle, Tokyo and Vermont); Mountains of the World (a book for climbers and hikers based on correspondence with climbers world-wide and published by Tuttle of Tokyo and Vermont); Roof of the Rockies (Pruett, Boulder, Colorado). Mr. Bueler now makes his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

BY COINCIDENCE we received simultaneously two articles on a topic of growing interest, the literature of Utopia and Dystopia. After due reflection we decided that they complemented rather than overlapped each other and decided to publish them back to back. GORHAM BEAUCHAMP provides a helpful introduction to the subject by his study of the utopian classics as well as some of the more famous contemporary works. After taking his bachelor’s degree at Baylor University he taught two years in Hongkong on an Asia Foundation Grant before returning to graduate school. He holds the Ph. D. degree from the University of Michigan, where he has been an assistant professor in the humanities department of their college of engineering since 1972. He has published -three articles on William Faulkner, one each on D. H. Lawrence, William Wordsworth, and Jonathan Swift, as well as several studies of utopian literature. In addition to the study appearing in our journal he has three other articles on utopian literature coming out shortly in other journals, and at the meeting of the M. L. A. Convention this approaching Christmas season he will chair a seminar on the subject of Utopian and Dystopian Literature.

MARY S. WEINKAUF, as the title of her article indicates, has concentrated her interest on five contemporary dystopias. Currently professor of English and head of that department at Dakota Wesleyan University, she has also taught at Adrian College and the University of Tennessee. Her bachelor's degree is from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and both her master's and doctor’s degrees are from the University of Tennessee. Her articles on science fiction and utopian literature have appeared in Extrapolation, New England Review, Texas Quarterly, Riverside Quarterly, Foundation, Dictics, and The Phi Kappa Phi Journal. She has also published articles on Milton in Tennessee Studies and Studies in English Literature and on women's literature in The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, but her big project is a motif index of science fiction emphasizing the social criticism of the genre. A summer research grant from Adrian College gave her much assistance in her research on utopianism.

KIM EZRA SHIENBAUM holds the B. A. with honors from the University of Leeds (England), the M. Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics, and the Ph. D. from New York University. Beginning as an adjunct instructor in Wagner College, Dr. Shienbaum has been assistant professor at York College, C. U. N. Y., since 1973. Since she is a very young professor, we are less surprised than gratified to be publishing her first article. We should like to add that she held the Major County Award of the University of Leeds (1964-1967) and the Social Science Research Council Fellowship, L. S. E. (1967-1968), and that she is a member of the Women's Caucus for Political Science.

OUR LAST ARTICLE is doubly a product of our own state. Not only was evangelist Gerald B. Winrod, fighting the "educational devils" with their contaminating doctrines, a notable Kansan, but ROY CAMPBELL, who commemorates WINROD in this issue, received part of his education here in Kansas State College, earning his master's in English in 1973. More recently he has been an instructor in English composition at Wichita State University, and there he received a writing fellowship to begin work last spring on his M. F. A. in creative writing. We believe this is his first article in a professional journal.

THE POEMS in our poetry section are all by ALBERT GOLDBARTH, who, at 27, has already established a reputation as one of the substantial voices of contemporary American poetry. An account of his career thus far would include publications in most of the major magazines printing poetry, four collections of his work since 1972, several appearances in representative anthologies, teaching positions at Utah and, currently, Cornell, along with, most recently, a National Endowment on the Arts $5000 fellowship for poetry. While it is generally not remarkable for a younger poet these days to write abundantly, Goldbarth's work, we think, is something more and something other than the invariably prolific product of the writing schools and the "mags." And, perhaps most remarkable, he has almost nothing to say about it. When we suggested that he might like to provide a little comment on his work to be included among these notes, he replied that he had less than a little to say: "I DON'T enjoy talking about such things as my poetics, my influences, etc. I generally try to avoid interviews, reviewing, essays on my work, the reading circuit, etc. It's not fun, and it's sometimes stultifying, for me to be that conscious of my inside processes. Besides, I'd rather be working on a new poem; that is what poets do, yes?" Therefore, the poems in this issue will speak entirely for themselves.

THE THREE REVIEWS of Albert Goldbarth' s most recent books are by Michael Heffernan, Jonathan Katz, and Dave Smith. Jonathan Katz, one of the editors of the Ark River Review, is Executive Director of the Kansas Arts Commission in Topeka. Recent poems of his were printed in the Beloit Poetry Journal. Dave Smith, whose poems have appeared in the QUARTERLY, is poet-in-residence at Cottey College, Nevada, Missouri. He will have poems this year in The New Yorker.

Recommended Citation

Kessler, Frank; Bueler, William M.; Shienbaum, Kim Ezra; Beauchamp, Gorman; Weinkauf, Mary S.; Campbell, Roy; Goldbarth, Albert; Heffernan, Michael; Smith, Dave; Katz, Jonathan; and Midwest Quarterly Editors (1975) "The Midwest Quarterly; Vol. 16 No. 2," The Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought: Vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 1.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/mwq/vol16/iss2/1